Rings are unlimited. Video is what you pay for.

Contact QR codes

The same plan also covers a QR you put on an advert instead of a wall — and that traffic is counted separately from your doorbell.

A contact QR lets whoever scans it start a video call, a voice call, or simply leave you a message — whichever of the three you switch on. Those are counted as interactions, and they have their own weekly number that is completely separate from your video calls: 5 a week on Free, 15 on Paid 1, 50 on Paid 2, 150 on Paid 3, and uncapped on Paid 4. A door never uses up an interaction and a contact QR never uses up a video call.

An interaction is only counted when you actually deal with it. Somebody scanning your code costs nothing, and a message that arrives and sits in your list costs nothing for as long as you leave it sitting there. One interaction is used when you open a message to read it — once ever, and re-reading it afterwards is free — or when you dismiss one without opening it, or when you answer a call that came in through the code. One item, one interaction, once: an opened message is free to throw away. That is deliberate: a QR code printed on an advert is public, and nothing a stranger does on their own can run up your bill — the meter only ever moves on your own tap.

And if you do use them all up in a week, your messages still arrive and are still saved. Video calls through the contact QR become audio-only until Monday, exactly like the doorbell.

What happens when the video runs out

Your doorbell keeps working. It just stops carrying a picture.

Once you have used the week's video calls, a visitor who asks for video is put through as an audio call instead. You are still told immediately that somebody is at your door, you can still hear them and talk back, and it still appears in your dashboard. We send you one message to say video is finished for the week. Not a hundred. Everything is back to normal on Monday at midnight, South African time.

When the week starts and stops

The week runs Monday to Sunday, South African time, and it resets at midnight on Monday morning. It is a fixed week, not a rolling seven days — so there is always one moment you can point at and say "that is when I get more", rather than a different one for every call you made.

How the weekly allowance is counted

It is counted across every door on your account, not per door — adding a second gate does not double it.

Only video calls that actually reached a phone count.

A ring that arrives during your quiet hours, or while the doorbell is paused, or one that was refused for hammering the code, does not come off your allowance. Neither does one you have already silenced with your own alert budget, nor an audio ring — those are unlimited — nor a video ring that was put through as audio because the allowance had already run out. You are only charged for video that did the thing you are paying for.

Talk time

A single call is capped at 5 minutes on every plan, including the paid ones. Virtual Doorbell is a doorbell — the cap is what stops it being used as a general phone line, and it is the same for everybody rather than something you can buy your way out of.

Paying, changing and stopping

Card payments are handled by our payment provider. We never see or store your full card number. You can stop at any time: your plan runs to the end of the period you have paid for and then drops back to Free — nothing is deleted, your doors and your history stay exactly where they are.

We may change these prices, but never for a period you have already paid for.